THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II Apostolic Pilgrimage to France (October 8 - 11, 1988) Visit to the European Parliament in the Council of Europe in Strasburg (October 11, 1988) [French, Italian, Spanish] Address by His Holiness Pope JOHN-PAUL II, in formal sitting (Strasbourg, 11/10/1988)video

continued

Below Google translated from French

I

2.
Since the end of World War II, the Holy See has continued to encourage
the construction of Europe. Certainly, the Church's mission to make
known to all men their salvation in Jesus Christ, whatever the
conditions of this story, because there is never a prerequisite for
this task. Also, without leaving the competence that is hers, she
considers it his duty to inform and support the initiatives developed
by the people who are in line with the values and principles it must
proclaim , attentive to the signs of the times that invite reflected in
the changing realities of existence permanent queries of the Gospel.

How
the Church could she lose interest in the construction of Europe, it is
established for centuries in the people that make up one day and has
brought to the baptismal font, the people for whom the Christian faith
is and remains one of the elements of their cultural identity?

3.
Today Europe can certainly welcome as a sign of the times the state of
peace and cooperation definitely installed between its member states,
which for centuries had exhausted their forces to make war and to seek
the hegemony on the other.

Sign of the times again, the
increased sensitivity to human rights and the value of democracy which
this Assembly is the expression and also wants to be the guarantor.
This membership is also always confirm that prevail in all
circumstances respect for the rights and dignity of the human person.

Sign
of the times too, we believe that this part of Europe, which has
invested so far in the field of economic cooperation, or more intensely
in search of his soul, and a blast capable of ensuring its spiritual
cohesion. On this point, I seem, you represent Europe is on the
threshold of a new phase of growth, both in itself and in its
relationship with the rest of the world.

4. "Single Act", which
will come into force at the end of 1992, will hasten the process of
European integration. A common political structure, an offshoot of the
free will of European citizens, far from endangering the identity of
the peoples of the Community, will be able to ensure more equitable
rights, including cultural, of all its regions. These European peoples
united will not accept the domination of one nation or culture on
others, but support the equal right of all to enrich others of their
difference.

The empires of the past have all failed in their
attempt to establish their dominance by the coercive force and the
policy of assimilation. Your Europe will be that of the free
association of all its peoples and the pooling of multiple riches of
diversity.

5. Other nations will certainly reach those that are
represented here today. My vow of Supreme Pastor of the universal
Church, came from Eastern Europe and knows the aspirations of the
Slavs, the other "lung" of our same European homeland, my wish is that
Europe is giving sovereignly free institutions, may one day be deployed
to the dimensions given to him by geography and more history. How could
I not like, because the culture inspired by Christian faith has
profoundly marked the history of the peoples of our unique Europe,
Greek and Latin, Germanic and Slavic, despite all the vicissitudes and
across social systems and ideologies?

6. The European nations
are all distinguished in their history by their openness to the world
and vital exchanges that they have established with the peoples of
other continents. No one imagines that a united Europe can retreat into
selfishness. Speaking with one voice, joining forces, it will be able,
even more than in the past, to devote resources and new energy to the
great task of the development of third world countries, especially
those who already enjoy with it traditional ties. The "Lomé
Convention", which resulted in institutionalized cooperation between
Assembly members and representatives from sixty-six countries in
Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, is in many ways exemplary.
European cooperation will be more credible and successful that it will
continue, without any mental domination, with the intention of helping
poor countries to take charge of their own destiny.

II

7.
Mr. President, the Church's message about God and the ultimate destiny
of man, questions that have the highest degree permeates European
culture. In truth, how could we conceive Europe without this
transcendent dimension?

Since,
on European soil, have developed, in modern times, the currents of
thought which have gradually spread God's understanding of the world
and of man, two opposing visions fed a constant tension between the
point view of believers and that of the proponents of an agnostic
humanism and even "atheist".

The
first, consider that obedience to God is the source of true freedom,
which is never arbitrary freedom and without purpose, but freedom for
truth and good, these two quantities are still being beyond the
capacity men to capture them completely.

Ethically,
this fundamental attitude is reflected by the acceptance of principles
and standards of behavior requiring the reason or under the authority
of the Word of God, which man, individually or collectively, can not
dispose at will, according to the fashions or the changing interests.

8.
The second attitude is that which, having removed any subordination of
the creature to God, or to a transcendent order of truth and good, man
considers himself as the principle and end of all things, society with
its laws, standards, achievements, his work as absolutely sovereign.
Ethics then has no other foundation than social consensus, and
individual freedom of other brake as the company seeks to impose to
safeguard the lives of others.

For
some, civil and political freedom, once conquered by a reversal of the
old order based on religious faith, is still seen as going hand in hand
with the marginalization and even the removal of religion, in which we
tend to see a disposal system. For some believers, conversely, a life
consistent with the faith would be possible only by a return to the old
order, also often idealized. These two antagonistic attitudes do not
provide solution compatible with the Christian message and the genius
of Europe. For when civil liberty reigns and is fully guaranteed
religious freedom, faith can only gain in force in meeting the
challenge that the address he unbelief and atheism can only measure its
limits to the challenge address her faith. Given this diversity of
views, the highest function of the law is also to guarantee all
citizens the right to live according to their conscience and not to
contradict the norms of the natural moral order recognized by reason .

9.
At this point, it seems important to remember that it is in the humus
of Christianity that modern Europe has drawn the principle - often
overlooked during the centuries of "Christendom" - which governs most
fundamentally his public life: i mean the principle proclaimed for the
first time by Christ, the distinction of "what is Caesar's" and "what
is God's". [1]

This
essential distinction between the sphere of development of the outer
frame of the earthly city and the independence of people lights from
the respective nature of the political community of which necessarily
belong all citizens and the religious community to which believers
freely adhere.

After
Christ, it is no longer possible to idolize society as devouring
collective greatness of the human person and his irreducible destiny.
Society, the state, political power belong to changing and always
perfectible part of this world. No social project can ever establish
the Kingdom of God, that is to say, the eschatological perfection on
earth. Political messianism lead mostly on the worst tyrannies. The
structures that companies never worth giving a definitive; they can not
provide for themselves all the goods which man aspires. In particular,
they can not substitute for the conscience of man or his quest for
truth and the absolute.

Public
life, the good order of the state based on the virtue of citizens,
which invites to subordinate individual interests to the common good,
not to give and not to recognize that this law is objectively right and
good. The ancient Greeks had discovered that there is no democracy
without liability of all to the law, and no law is based on a
transcendent standard of truth and justice.

To
say that it is the religious community, not the state, to manage "what
is God's", is to ask a salutary limit to the power of men, and this
limit is that of the field of consciousness, last Things, the ultimate
meaning of life, the absolute on opening of voltage to an unprecedented
achievement, which stimulates the efforts and inspires the right
choices. All schools of thought of our old continent should think about
what gloomy outlook could lead the exclusion of God from public life,
of God as the ultimate instance of ethics and supreme guarantee against
all abuses of human power over the man.

10.
Our European history abundantly shows how often the line between "what
is Caesar's" and "what is God's" has been crossed in both directions.
The medieval Latin Christianity - to mention it - which theoretically
developed yet, resuming the tradition of Aristotle, natural conception
of the State, has not always escaped the fundamentalist temptation to
exclude temporal community those who do not profess the true faith.
Religious fundamentalism, without distinction between the sphere of
faith and that of civilian life, still practiced in other lands, seems
incompatible with the genius of Europe such as shaped the Christian
message .dropoff window

But
it is also that came in our time, the greatest threats, when ideologies
Absolutized the company itself or a dominant group in defiance of the
human person and his freedom. Where man no longer takes support on a
scale that transcends, may engage in unbridled power of the arbitrary
and pseudo-absolutes that destroy it.